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Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door;
A hundred oxen at your levee roar.'

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Poor Avarice one torment more would find;
Nor could profusion squander all in kind:
Astride his cheese sir Morgan might we meet;
And Worldly crying coals from street to street,
Whom, with a wig so wild, and mien so mazed,
Pity mistakes for some poor tradesman crazed.
Had Colepepper's whole wealth been hops and hogs,
Could he himself have sent it to the dogs?
His grace will game: to White's a bull be led,
With spurning heels and with a butting head.
To White's be carried, as to ancient games,
Fair coursers, vases, and alluring dames.
Shall then Uxorio, if the stakes he sweep,
Bear home six whores, and make his lady weep?
Or soft Adonis, so perfumed and fine,

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Drive to St. James's a whole herd of swine?
O, filthy check on all industrious skill,
To spoil the nation's last great trade, Quadrille !
Since then, my lord, on such a world we fall,
What say you? B. Say? Why, take it, gold

and all.

62 Some misers of great wealth, proprietors of the coalmines, had entered at this time into an association to keep up coals to an extravagant price, whereby the poor were reduced almost to starve; till one of them, taking the advantage of underselling the rest, defeated the design. One of those misers was worth £10,000, another £7000 a year.-Pope.

65 Colepepper's. Sir William Colepepper, bart., a person of an ancient family and fortune, without one other quality of a gentleman; who, after ruining himself at the gaming-table, passed the rest of his days in sitting there to see the ruin of others; preferring to subsist on borrowing and begging, rather than to enter into any reputable method of life; and refusing a post in the army, which was offered him.- Pope.

P. What riches give us let us then inquire: Meat, fire, and clothes. B. What more? P. Meat, clothes, and fire.

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Is this too little? would you more than live?
Alas! 'tis more than Turner finds they give:
Alas! 'tis more than (all his visions pass'd)
Unhappy Wharton, waking, found at last!
What can they give? to dying Hopkins, heirs? 85
To Chartres, vigor? Japhet, nose and ears?

22 Turner. One who, being possessed of £300,000, laid down his coach, because interest was reduced from five to four per cent., and then put £70,000 into the Charitable Corporation for better interest; which sum having lost, he took it so much to heart, that he kept his chamber ever after. It is thought he would not have outlived it, but that he was heir to another estate, which he daily expected; and that by this course of life he saved both clothes and all other expenses.Pope.

84 Unhappy Wharton. A nobleman of great qualities; but as unfortunate in the application of them, as if they had been vices and follies.-Pope.

85 Hopkins. A citizen, whose rapacity obtained him the name of Vulture Hopkins. He lived worthless, but died worth £300,000, which he would give to no person living, but left it so as not to be inherited till after the second generation. His counsel representing to him how many years it must be before this could take effect, and that his money could only lie at interest all that time, he expressed great joy thereat, and said, 'They would then be as long in spending, as he had been in getting it.' But the chancery afterwards set aside the will, and gave it to the heir at law.-Pope.

86 Japhet, nose and ears? Japhet Crook, alias sir Peter Stranger, was punished with the loss of those parts, for having forged a conveyance of an estate to himself, on which he took up several thousand pounds: he was at the same time sued in chancery for having fraudulently obtained a will, by which he possessed another considerable estate, in wrong of the brother of the deceased. By these means he was worth a great sum, which, in reward for the small loss of his ears, he

Can they in gems bid pallid Hippia glow?
In Fulvia's buckle ease the throbs below?
Or heal, old Narses, thy obscener ail,

With all the embroidery plaster'd at thy tail? 90
They might, were Harpax not too wise to spend,
Give Harpax' self the blessing of a friend;
Or find some doctor that would save the life
Of wretched Shylock, spite of Shylock's wife:
But thousands die, without or this or that;
Die, and endow a college or a cat:

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To some, indeed, Heaven grants the happier fate,

To enrich a bastard, or a son they hate.

Perhaps you think the poor might have their part?

Bond damns the poor, and hates them from his

heart.

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enjoyed in prison till his death, and quietly left to his executor.-Pope.

96 Endow a college or a cat. La belle Stuart,' of Grammont's Memoirs, was the endower. The poet ridicules her pensions to cats; but Warton explains, that her provision for their maintenance, was, in fact, nothing more than an ingenious, though whimsical contrivance, for giving annuities to several poor relations, who would have been too proud to receive direct benefaction. By quartering her cats on them, she saved their delicacy.

100 Bond damns the poor, &c. This Epistle was written in the year 1730, when a corporation was established to lend money to the poor on pledges, by the name of the Charitable Corporation; but the whole was turned only to an iniquitous method of enriching particular people, to the ruin of such numbers, that it became a parliamentary concern to endeavor the relief of those unhappy sufferers; and three of the managers, who were members of the house, were expelled.Pope.

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The grave sir Gilbert holds it for a rule,
That every man in want is knave or fool.

'God cannot love,' says Blunt, with tearless eyes,
The wretch he starves;' and piously denies :
But the good bishop, with a meeker air,
Admits, and leaves them, Providence's care.

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Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, Each does but hate his neighbor as himself: Damn'd to the mines, an equal fate betides The slave that digs it and the slave that hides. B. Who suffer thus, mere charity should own, Must act on motives powerful, though unknown. P. Some war, some plague, or famine they foresee,

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Some revelation hid from you and me.
Why Shylock wants a meal, the cause is found;
He thinks a loaf will rise to fifty pound.
What made directors cheat in South-sea year?
To live on venison when it sold so dear.
Ask you why Phryne the whole auction buys?
Phryne foresees a general excise :
Why she and Sappho raise that monstrous sum?
Alas! they fear a man will cost a plum.

120

105 But the good bishop. In the folio edition of 1735, this had been sir Robert Sutton; but Warburton, to whom Sutton had been an early patron, and given the living of Broadbroughton, prevailed on Pope to erase the name. The imaginary bishop then took his place. It was the foolish fashion of the time to ridicule church dignitaries indiscriminately; and Pope could scarcely be expected to exhibit his wisdom at the expense of his prejudices.

118 To live on venison. In the extravagance and luxury of the South-sea year, the price of a haunch of venison was from three to five pounds.-Pope.

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Wise Peter sees the world's respect for gold, And therefore hopes this nation may be sold. Glorious ambition! Peter, swell thy store, And be what Rome's great Didius was before. The crown of Poland, venal twice an age, To just three millions stinted modest Gage : But nobler scenes Maria's dreams unfold; Hereditary realms, and worlds of gold. Congenial souls! whose life one avarice joins, And one fate buries in the Asturian mines. Much-injured Blunt! why bears he Britain's hate?

A wizard told him in these words our fate :

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123 Wise Peter. Peter Walter, a person not only eminent in the wisdom of his profession, as a dexterous attorney, but allowed to be a good, if not a safe conveyancer; extremely respected by the nobility of this land, though free from all manner of luxury and ostentation. His wealth was never seen, and his bounty never heard of, except to his own son, for whom he procured an employment of considerable profit, of which he gave him as much as was necessary. He purchased Stalbridge-park, near Sherborne, a seat of the Boyle family, now in possession of the earl of Uxbridge, where he lived many years. He was a neighbor of Henry Fielding, who lived at East Stour, about four miles distant; and was supposed to be the character described by him in Tom Jones, the important Peter Pounce.-Pope.

126 Rome's great Didius. A Roman lawyer, so rich as to purchase the empire when it was set to sale on the death of Pertinax.-Pope.

127 The crown of Poland, &c. The two persons here mentioned, Mr. Gage, and lady Mary Herbert, daughter of William, marquis of Powis, in the Mississippi despised to realise above £300,000; the gentleman with a view to the purchase of the crown of Poland, the lady on a vision of the like royal nature.-Pope.

129 Maria's dreams. Lady Mary Herbert, daughter of William, marquis of Powis.-Pope.

133 Much-injured Blunt. Sir John Blunt, originally a scrivener,

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